06 June 2010

It was good to meet you last month at Biola. The Q&A period after your presentation was a little too short, but I thought that we identified a couple of areas in which we could "continue to converse." These might include concepts of explanation, ideas surrounding supernatural action, notions of randomness and divine oversight, or more importantly the ways in which people (especially Christians) go about assessing the explanatory power and success of what we call science.

Yes, it would be great to follow up on our brief meeting onstage, and to find ourselves in situations in which topics of mutual interest are discussed by knowledgeable and intelligent people (at conferences, for example, or in multidisciplinary working groups). For my part, I'm eager to be involved in such activities, and in the coming years I intend to seek and create opportunities for scholars to consider concepts of biological design in the context of Christian belief.

Right now, I don't see how you could be a thoughtful contributor to such an effort. It's not because you're stupid, or because you have "bad relationship skills," and it's not because you prefer ID-based explanations for biological phenomena. It's because you seem to have abandoned scholarship and the intellectual community, and instead embraced apologetics and political persuasion. As near as I can tell, you've almost completely isolated yourself from science and from scholarship, and this means you have no future as a contributor to the consideration of design in biology. That strikes me as a sad waste; hence my letter to you.

Here are my observations, along with some unsolicited advice.

1. Although you claim to be interested in the origins of biological information and genetic control systems, you seem not to have any serious contact with scientists and scholars who study such things. Do you attend conferences on these subjects, or initiate contact with experts in these fields? Your ideas are potentially very significant – you seek to rule out naturalistic explanation for the origin of life and of DNA – but even if they were merely interesting, it would be foolish for you to think that you could contribute to the development of new theories or viewpoints outside of regular and rigorous interaction with colleagues who know this stuff the best. I have the impression that you don't do this. That's a crazy mistake.

2. A very serious and related problem is the nature of the scientific community that you do interact with. Jonathan Wells just isn't an accomplished or respected scientist, and his ideas are considered laughable by those (including me) who know and understand the relevant fields. Richard Sternberg's platonic views of biology are interesting, but he's on the fringe (to put it mildly) and, worse, he seems not to understand molecular biology. Doug Axe is a smart guy, it seems to me, but the two of you desperately need to get out of your freakish little gated community and talk to people who know that the initiation of cancer is indeed fueled to a large extent by driver mutations, and that genome sizes are indeed a hard problem for design theorists to tackle. When you have Wells whispering to you in one ear, and the bizarre perspectives of Richard Sternberg echoing in your mind, you have a huge problem: you're out of touch with real science, with real biology, with the ideas that you have to engage in order to really put design on the map.

Steve, seriously: you have no chance of having any influence outside of the church school circuit as long as you are isolating yourself and, worse, listening to some pretty confused people who seem not to even understand the ever-changing fields they claim to represent. Get out more. And find some new friends. It is without sarcasm or guile that I say that you are welcome to contact me anytime to ask questions or discuss ideas.

3. Your Discovery Institute is a horrific mistake, an epic intellectual tragedy that is degrading the minds of those who consume its products and bringing dishonor to you and to the church. It is for good reason that Casey Luskin is held in such extreme contempt by your movement's critics, and there's something truly sick about the pattern of attacks that your operatives launched in the weeks after the Biola event. It's clear that you have a cadre of attack dogs that do this work for you, and some of them seem unconstrained by standards of integrity. I can't state this strongly enough: the Discovery Institute is a dangerous cancer on the Christian intellect, both because of its unyielding commitment to dishonesty and because of its creepy mission to undermine science itself. I'd like to see you do better, but I have no such hope for your institute. It needs to be destroyed, and I will do what I can to bring that about.

4. If you want to save your legacy, to make your movement into something other than repackaged creationism, you should do both of the following. First, you should acknowledge the excellence of natural explanation in general and the steadily growing prowess of origin-of-life theories in particular. I don't mean that you should embrace these explanations, I mean that you should stop misleading your credulous audiences (in print and on stage) into concluding that such ideas are silly. Everyone who knows these fields knows that you are engaging in profoundly misleading tactics, and we have a right to question your integrity when we see that kind of stuff. There's a difference between pointing to the weaknesses in a theory and deliberately portraying it, inaccurately, as obvious nonsense. Stop it. Second, you should pay more attention to the ideas of Simon Conway Morris and (to a lesser extent) Michael Denton. If there's any hope for your movement at all, any hope that it can make intellectual headway and offer rational and useful explanation, it is to be found in the deliberate focus on design that Conway Morris and like-minded thinkers offer.

Steve, I just don't see how the Discovery Institute can be saved; from here it looks to be wholly corrupt. But you can still become a part of the scholarly examination of the phenomenon of biological design, and as a Christian you can offer insight into how these questions impinge on issues of faith. It would be a shame if your only contribution was as a political propagandist who served as an impediment to the honest consideration of design and intelligence in biological origins and who was remembered as an enemy of science.

Best regards,

Steve Matheson

Posted by
Stephen Matheson

Please review my Rules and policies before posting a comment. Note that comments are closed after a month. If you would like to get in touch with me, visit the About page for contact details, including an anonymous comment form that works all the time.

An open letter to Stephen Meyer

Dear Steve:

It was good to meet you last month at Biola. The Q&A period after your presentation was a little too short, but I thought that we identified a couple of areas in which we could "continue to converse." These might include concepts of explanation, ideas surrounding supernatural action, notions of randomness and divine oversight, or more importantly the ways in which people (especially Christians) go about assessing the explanatory power and success of what we call science.

Yes, it would be great to follow up on our brief meeting onstage, and to find ourselves in situations in which topics of mutual interest are discussed by knowledgeable and intelligent people (at conferences, for example, or in multidisciplinary working groups). For my part, I'm eager to be involved in such activities, and in the coming years I intend to seek and create opportunities for scholars to consider concepts of biological design in the context of Christian belief.

Right now, I don't see how you could be a thoughtful contributor to such an effort. It's not because you're stupid, or because you have "bad relationship skills," and it's not because you prefer ID-based explanations for biological phenomena. It's because you seem to have abandoned scholarship and the intellectual community, and instead embraced apologetics and political persuasion. As near as I can tell, you've almost completely isolated yourself from science and from scholarship, and this means you have no future as a contributor to the consideration of design in biology. That strikes me as a sad waste; hence my letter to you.

Here are my observations, along with some unsolicited advice.

1. Although you claim to be interested in the origins of biological information and genetic control systems, you seem not to have any serious contact with scientists and scholars who study such things. Do you attend conferences on these subjects, or initiate contact with experts in these fields? Your ideas are potentially very significant – you seek to rule out naturalistic explanation for the origin of life and of DNA – but even if they were merely interesting, it would be foolish for you to think that you could contribute to the development of new theories or viewpoints outside of regular and rigorous interaction with colleagues who know this stuff the best. I have the impression that you don't do this. That's a crazy mistake.

2. A very serious and related problem is the nature of the scientific community that you do interact with. Jonathan Wells just isn't an accomplished or respected scientist, and his ideas are considered laughable by those (including me) who know and understand the relevant fields. Richard Sternberg's platonic views of biology are interesting, but he's on the fringe (to put it mildly) and, worse, he seems not to understand molecular biology. Doug Axe is a smart guy, it seems to me, but the two of you desperately need to get out of your freakish little gated community and talk to people who know that the initiation of cancer is indeed fueled to a large extent by driver mutations, and that genome sizes are indeed a hard problem for design theorists to tackle. When you have Wells whispering to you in one ear, and the bizarre perspectives of Richard Sternberg echoing in your mind, you have a huge problem: you're out of touch with real science, with real biology, with the ideas that you have to engage in order to really put design on the map.

Steve, seriously: you have no chance of having any influence outside of the church school circuit as long as you are isolating yourself and, worse, listening to some pretty confused people who seem not to even understand the ever-changing fields they claim to represent. Get out more. And find some new friends. It is without sarcasm or guile that I say that you are welcome to contact me anytime to ask questions or discuss ideas.

3. Your Discovery Institute is a horrific mistake, an epic intellectual tragedy that is degrading the minds of those who consume its products and bringing dishonor to you and to the church. It is for good reason that Casey Luskin is held in such extreme contempt by your movement's critics, and there's something truly sick about the pattern of attacks that your operatives launched in the weeks after the Biola event. It's clear that you have a cadre of attack dogs that do this work for you, and some of them seem unconstrained by standards of integrity. I can't state this strongly enough: the Discovery Institute is a dangerous cancer on the Christian intellect, both because of its unyielding commitment to dishonesty and because of its creepy mission to undermine science itself. I'd like to see you do better, but I have no such hope for your institute. It needs to be destroyed, and I will do what I can to bring that about.

4. If you want to save your legacy, to make your movement into something other than repackaged creationism, you should do both of the following. First, you should acknowledge the excellence of natural explanation in general and the steadily growing prowess of origin-of-life theories in particular. I don't mean that you should embrace these explanations, I mean that you should stop misleading your credulous audiences (in print and on stage) into concluding that such ideas are silly. Everyone who knows these fields knows that you are engaging in profoundly misleading tactics, and we have a right to question your integrity when we see that kind of stuff. There's a difference between pointing to the weaknesses in a theory and deliberately portraying it, inaccurately, as obvious nonsense. Stop it. Second, you should pay more attention to the ideas of Simon Conway Morris and (to a lesser extent) Michael Denton. If there's any hope for your movement at all, any hope that it can make intellectual headway and offer rational and useful explanation, it is to be found in the deliberate focus on design that Conway Morris and like-minded thinkers offer.

Steve, I just don't see how the Discovery Institute can be saved; from here it looks to be wholly corrupt. But you can still become a part of the scholarly examination of the phenomenon of biological design, and as a Christian you can offer insight into how these questions impinge on issues of faith. It would be a shame if your only contribution was as a political propagandist who served as an impediment to the honest consideration of design and intelligence in biological origins and who was remembered as an enemy of science.